Picket Report, Keith Henson

From: Keith Henson
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Picket report Mt.View plus
Date: 5 Jun 2000 03:26:12 GMT
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
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It was a three org kind of day . . . .
Yesterday an interviewer and her taping tech spent a few hours with me.
She is from France, and her camera guy has a limited command of English.
My paranoia was set a little too high yesterday--I suspected OSA was
running an op to be sure I would not picket Hemet over the weekend.
Not so it seems.
She wanted to see the orgs in action, so we made a date to picket an
org today. Brent Stone had seen a new one which was to open today in
Mt. View about two blocks toward San Jose from the old one so that was
the choice.
I was late (too much party last night) but we managed to connect not far
from the San Jose org at 11 am. Since we were close, and I wanted her to
see the org which as sucked in such a number of Indians (she is Indian) so
we went by there for a short picket. Car count was *up*, 51 today. I
don't know if this is the result of a growing org or a major effort to get
people to the "Sunday services." If they are doing that well, they don't
have the money available to deal with the weeds growing through the
pavement. Anyway, they got a 10-15 minute picket. Not much action but
the guy I refer to as blue shirt came out and cursed a blue streak at me.
Being on camera though he refrained from his usual nazi salute.
Then we went off to the new org in Mt. View. Brent was nearby when we got
there and wisely had refrained from starting to picket them before he had
someone to picket with. We started picketing them and *instant* heavy
entrubulation. The new org has floor to ceiling windows facing the
street, and there was no way to block our picketing from the people
inside. Nice Mark and some other dude who has picketed my house in the
past came out and made an attempt for about an hour to handle us--walking
with us and trying to introvert us. It was complete bust. They also
called the cops, who told them the sad news that there was nothing they
could do about peaceful protest, even if they were claiming to be a
"church."
At the end of an hour they got orders from headquarters to quit trying,
and the rest of the picket was much like my recent experience in Hemet,
kind of boring except for the honks of support as the cars drive by.
Their "grand opening" offered the usual suck-them-in personality test,
etc., but I don't think there were *any* new people there. A shame
because new people often take pickets as a hint they should be somewhere
else and bug out. We could see inside where it looked very much like the
people were running TRO, sitting across from each other (under the
watchful eye of an LRH photo) an staring at each other.
After maybe an hour and getting the cops to check on the camera guy, Brent
went across the street for a long interview. I continued picketing with a
number of honks and thumbs up for my efforts. Brent finally finished
our news people left and he joined me for a short time before he had to
leave due to the press of other business. By this time the event had
kind of wound down, but I stayed till most of them had driven off, and
then I left.
Near the end, a desperate staffer came out and hit on some Mexican dudes
who were looking at the cars in a lot next door. This is a lot where no
car is more than $800. He managed (by being really obnoxious) to sell
this guy a copy of Dianetics and to get his phone number. The guy also
got a recent flyer by Kristi which should immunize him.
As things were winding down, nice Mark mentioned to me that for all our
efforts they were still expanding. This event was advertized as the Mt
View org going to St. Hill size. Considering that there were not more
than 40-45 people there, I have to hand it to the ARSCC operations in
England for their highly successful efforts which reduced St. Hill to such
a tiny size.
Since I was going that way, I stopped and gave the old Mt. View location
a short picket. They saw me and one guy had me turn my picket signs so
he could read all 4 surfaces, but they mostly ignored me.
I would guess that as many as 200 scns were out in this area doing scn
today. That seems like a lot, but the south bay has about 2.5 million
people in it. At one percent of the US population, and 45k scns, they
should have about 450 members here.
Keith Henson
PS, these reports are more effort to write than the picketing. But rules
are rules and if you don't report, you don't get credit.